ART 100 “Introduction to the History of Art”
M,W, 10—10:50 am
ART 100 is a beloved rite of passage.
Presenting a sampling of different media from antiquity to the present, the course features guest lectures by A&A faculty and Museum staff in their areas of expertise.
Different than in years past, each precept in ART 100 will have a theme such as power, hierarchy, or gender to explore throughout the semester. Students will develop skills to contribute to a digital humanities project in the class, culminating with individual contributions to a precept-wide online exhibition.
Monica Bravo (Photo/Sameer Khan)
“The new dimension built into ART 100 precepts encourages students to think about individual and collaborative making both in artistic and in their own scholarly practice, and challenges them to think critically about questions of audience, curatorship, and visual argumentation.”
ART 100 “Introduction to the History of Art” course details
ART 217 / EAS 217 “The Arts of Japan”
T,Th, 11—11:50 am
Itō Jakuchū, Fish and Octopus, 1765, Museum of the Imperial Collections
The course will explore a broad range of media representing 5000 years of Japanese art history by delving into the life stories of individual things.
Developing the critical skill of visual analysis will be a key focus of the course. Students will learn to make close, sustained, and repeated observations of objects, and then articulate those observations. “Although it is a fundamental tool of the academic art historian’s tool kit, developing this kind of attention has applications as an ethical, intellectual, and even spiritual practice that you can take into many other areas of life,” said Professor Rachel Saunders. “It will change the way you see.”
Rachel Saunders (Photo/Antoinette Hocbo)
“We will be encountering prehistoric ritual figurines and medieval mandalas, ‘impossible’ Zen paintings and ‘enlivened’ sculpture; narrative paintings of the world’s oldest novel and sacred architectural sites. We’ll also cover printing, calligraphy, and ink arts, and photography and we’ll discuss contemporary protest art in Okinawa, and Japanese-American artists working in nearby New York City today. We’ll think about the ethics of exhibition, of historical storytelling, and what constitutes ‘Japanese’ art history today.”
— Rachel Saunders
ART 217 “The Arts of Japan” course details
ART 260 / AAS 260 / AFS 260 “Introduction to African Art”
T,Th, 1:30—2:20 pm
Covering 15,000 years of art history, the course will explore art and architecture from prehistory to the 20th century from across the African continent.
Combining Africa’s cultural history and developments in artistic forms, the course establishes a long historical view of the stunning diversity of the continent’s indigenous arts and architecture.
Representations the course will explore include Paleolithic rock art of northern and southern Africa, ancient Nubia and Meroe; Neolithic cultures such as Nok, Djenne and Ife; African kingdoms, including Benin, Asante, Bamun, Kongo, Kuba, Great Zimbabwe, and the Zulu; Christian Ethiopia and the Islamic Swahili coast; and other societies, such as the Sherbro, Igbo, and the Maasai.
Chika Okeke-Agulu
"If you were ever curious about Africa, its history, people and cultures, this course offers you a rewarding journey through 15,000 years of incredible, incomparable and diverse art from all over the continent. Students with no prior knowledge of African art are especially welcome!"
ART 260 “Introduction to African Art” course details
Jean Bérain, Habit d’Architecte, ca. 1682, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Nicolas de Larmessin II, Habit d’Ingénieur, ca. 1695
ART 291 / URB 291 / ARC 291 “Competing Professions”
M, W, 11—11:50 am
Architects and engineers started to organize themselves as professions in the early modern period, competing to secure commissions.
This course traces the paths of two professions that came to define themselves against each other.
Students will first review the different actors of the European early modern building world, before focusing on the fields of contest between architects and engineers and how this battle ultimately defined the nature of each profession.
Basile Baudez (Photo/Sameer Khan)
“Go back to a time when architects and engineers fought against each other to build bridges, fortifications and theaters in Europe and in its colonial empires. See how this battle ultimately defined the nature of each profession, between art and science."